The Wraith King saga continues.
The demonic horde that threatened to devour the world has been defeated, but at great cost.
Plagued by guilt and nightmares, Serovek Pangion sets out to deliver the soulless body of the monk Megiddo to the heretical Jeden Order for safekeeping. Accompanying him is sha-Anhuset, the Kai woman he admires and desires most–a woman barely tolerant of him.
Devoted to her regent, Anhuset reluctantly agrees to act as a Kai ambassador on the trip, even though the bold margrave known as the Beladine Stallion gets under her skin like no other, and Anhuset fears he’ll worm his way into her armored heart as well.
But guilt and unwelcome attraction are the least of their problems. The demons thought vanquished are stirring again, and a warlord with blood-soaked ambition turns a journey of compassion into a fight for survival. When the Beladine king brands Serovek a traitor, Anhuset must choose between sacrificing the life of a man she’s grown to love and abandoning lifelong fealty to the Kai people.
A tale of loyalty and acceptance.
Title : The Ippos King
Author : Grace Draven
Series : Wraith Kings #3
Format : ebook / overdrive
Page Count : 437
Genre : Adult Fantasy
Publisher : Indie
Release Date : October 6, 2020
Reviewer : Micky / Hollis
Rating : ★ ★ ★ / ★ ★.5
Micky’s 3 star review
I’m a sad bunny posting this rating but it is what it is. Anyone who knows me, knows that I recommend Grace Draven and this series left, right and centre but sadly The Ippos King was disappointing to me. This wasn’t a bad book, it was an okay read, but I found it inconsistent in terms of pacing and spark.
Anhuset and Serovek were a couple that Wraith Kings readers have been waiting for. The unlikeliest of pairings but I’ve always imagined them perfectly matched. The best thing about The Ippos King was these two as a couple. However, the tension and build between them wasn’t always there. When it was, it lit a fire and I felt Grace Draven’s spark in the writing.
I struggled with not feeling the story much at all for the first half of the book. It felt like there was some over-lamenting back to previous plots. However, at about 45% in the ebook, the story started to gain some traction for me and it kept going like that until about 75%. So you can see, I felt an inconsistency in the story keeping my attention with plot and pacing.
I definitely liked the ongoing story of the monk element of the Wraith Kings and I look forward to reading more in that vein. I liked some of the side characters and the main characters themselves. I just didn’t get that feeling I normally get with this author’s books.
I will continue to champion Grace and her other books and I’ll still look forward to book four in this series. However, I won’t eagerly recommending this installment.
Hollis’ 2.5 star review
I’m sorry to say but this installment wasn’t quite worth the wait.
As happens more often than I like, the build-up for a particular romantic pairing was better than the reality. The culmination of finally getting these two together? It just fell completely flat. I felt very little real chemistry for the majority of the romance.
Additionally the story was long, and dragged, and half the time rehashed moments from the previous books — which, I mean, fine, it’s been like six years, a reminder wouldn’t be amiss — but it used those as a touchstone one too many times to beat us over the head as the foundation of this pairing. Which, again, totally fizzled.
The tie-in to the big confict of book two is interesting, and I’m curious to see more of that play out in book four, but the actual telling of this story could’ve probably been summed up in a novella. Much of this could have been trimmed. And this definitely needed a more thorough editing pass; there were quite a few formatting bits that fell through the cracks, not to mention a continuity issue or two, and I wouldn’t have thought to see that after all the time spent on this release.
But alas! Draven has written some really great stories and I’m not convinced this series should be scratched off that list yet. I’m keen for book four — whenever that’s to come.
A Take from Two Cities 